Janus Films is releasing a 2K Resoration of Ngozi Onwurah’s afrofuturist drama sci-fi, Welcome II The Terrordome. The film premiered at Sundance in 1995 and was the first theatrically distributed British feature directed by a Black woman and independent Black British feature film to be released in the UK, that same year. We believe that is what you call trailblazing.
Spike lives in a slum called the Terrordome with his sister Anjela while trying to build a future with his pregnant girlfriend, Jodie. After a racist attack claims the life of Anjela's young son, her violent quest for revenge sparks escalating tensions that threaten to plunge the Terrordome into an all-out race war.
The story goes that Onwurah's film was dismissed by British film critics at the time yet here we are, some thirty years later, and the message in her film seems prophetic now.
Welcome II The Terrordome opens in New York at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) on July 31st before a national rollout. The trailer and poster for this release were sent out today. Check them both out below.
WELCOME IITHE TERRORDOMEDirector Ngozi Onwurah's radical Afrofuturist vision**New 2K Restoration**OPENS JULY 31IN NEW YORK AT BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC (BAM)NATIONAL ROLLOUT TO FOLLOWNgozi Onwurah’s radically ahead-of-its-time Afrofuturist vision WELCOME II THE TERRORDOME made history as the first theatrically distributed British feature directed by a Black woman. Nevertheless, it was largely dismissed upon its release by critics unable to see the urgency in its evocation of a gritty dystopia in which Black people have been relegated to living in a slum called the Terrordome, where simmering racial tension threatens to boil over in the wake of a young boy’s death. Over thirty years later, Onwurah’s fusion of political commentary and genre spectacle looks positively prescient, and her ability to build an entire cosmology that connects the history of slavery to present-day police brutality is nothing less than visionary.